Remind the NSA: We're Watching YOU.

[seawasp]

sidhekin posted a link to an article about the intelligence community's frothing outrage against Snowden, in which one person said:


“These guys are emoting how pissed they are,” Peter Singer, a cyber-security expert at the Brookings Institute. “Do you think people at the NSA would put a statue of him out front?”



And my reaction...?

  Maybe THEY wouldn't, but you know... I think we SHOULD. A giant statue of Snowden, facing INWARD, towards the building, watching it with that calm, penetrating gaze we've seen in multiple photos. A statue at least the height of the building.

  Reminding them every day that THEY are not supposed to watch US. That WE are watching THEM.

  Snowden revealed their treasonous and unconstitutional actions; he's not the traitor here.

  Intelligence services have a useful part to play. But they have exceeded their justifiable authority and function on EVERY level, and my personal feeling is that ALL of them need to be dismantled, their files WIPED, and entirely new -- heavily constrained -- intelligence services set up to replace them. Homeland Security must be dismantled, all the extant intelligence agencies either shut down or severely downsized, and the mission of the downsized or replacement agences carefully, rigorously defined, and constrained specifically by rules STARTING with the Constitution and working down.

  And in front of every intelligence building, a statue of Snowden. Watching. Always watching.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Homeland Security should be disbanded, and everyone who worked for it flagged as barred from all future Federal employment in any capacity. It's been that badly run.

[theoldone.livejournal.com]

I agree, and love the statue idea! We may have to crowd-fund it though.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Doubtful that such a purge is going to happen - or even be truly useful/helpful - regardless of what should and does happen to DHS as a US federal branch.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I doubt if it will happen, because of our addiction to security theater, but if it did happen it would be useful two ways.

(1) - Deterrent Effect: It would put the members of other Federal agencies on notice that if they screw up badly enough they could lose their cushy Federal jobs and careers, and

(2) - Personnel Improvement: Anyone willing to work for DHS, by now, is fairly obviously someone we don't want to trust with security responsibilities. We could always exempt the people working for real agencies that got folded into DHS, such as the Coast Guard.

Seriously, DHS has been run in the most unprofessional, incompetent manner of any security agency of which I've ever heard, in a Free World Power.

[k-kinnison.livejournal.com]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Even tho the (former) president made an executive order for warrentless wiretaps, they are somehow committing treason?

I highly doubt anyone could commit a treason when following a direct order from the commander in chief.

Unconstitutional? that is up for the SCOTUS to decide, not us

[dewline.livejournal.com]

If the Commander in Chief can be accused of treason, so can those following his/her orders. Yes? No?

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

You might be surprised to learn that "I was just following orders" was not considered a valid defense against war crimes after World War II.

It still is not. Soldiers in the US armed forces are still instructed that it is their duty to refuse an unlawful order. Why should civilian employees of the federal government, elected, appointed or hired, be expected to do any less?

"Unconstitutional" is for ALL of us to decide. Now, it's true that only the Supreme Court can make a _binding_ declaration on that point for everyone. But any judge has the authority to do so, though he might be overruled on appeal. Every prosecutor has the authority to decide not to prosecute someone if he thinks the law in question is invalid. Again, he may be answerable to the public/his bosses, but he can do so. Every cop makes decisions every day about whether to arrest someone for this or that, and constitutionality of the law can factor into that. (Mostly, I suspect, it doesn't. Too many cops these days are eager proponents of a police state, sadly. But they could.)

And you, as a voter and as a juror, have every right (and I'd say the responsibility) to determine whether or not a given law or government policy is constitutional--and to do everything in your power to overturn or monkeywrench such laws, including voting to acquit a defendant if the law he violated is, in your opinion, unconstitutional.

[seawasp]

"Ve vere chust followink orders, Ja?" was pretty much busted as a defense after WWII, and it was implied to NOT be a defense long before that.

In the military, and I think in most if not all intelligence services, you swear an oath to DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION of the United States against ALL ENEMIES, both foreign AND DOMESTIC.

If the President, or the President AND the Joint Chiefs, or anyone else, gives you an order that in your considered opinion is a violation of the Constitution and other laws under which you operate, your sworn duty is to DISobey those orders and blow the whistle.

If, as Snowden did, you walk into an entire ORGANIZATION violating the Constitution, your sworn duty is to gather as much evidence as you can and then expose them. If that means getting the hell out of the country and broadcasting the info because you believe it's impossible to otherwise expose them, then that's what you do.

Snowden's one of the heroes of the age, even if people later expose dirt on him (which I'm sure they will, if they try hard enough; virtually everyone has something in their past they don't want known.)

[k-kinnison.livejournal.com]

I could accuse anyone of anything. Proving it is another matter.

And no, if someone is following a LAWFUL order, they really cannot be accused of treason, for following the order of someone accused of treason.

Now if they are ordered to commit am act of treason, then yes

[k-kinnison.livejournal.com]

I just find it interesting that Snowden and the NSA is getting all the attention, when the attention should be directed at the people who ordered the NSA wiretapping in the beginning.

As the article pointed out. It starts with GWB. Yet no one wants to go there.

[murstein.livejournal.com]

As the article pointed out. It starts with GWB. Yet no one wants to go there.

Ford's pre-emptive pardon of Nixon showed that it's unprofitable, even if you have the majority of Americans on your side. And half of America (give or take 10%) is praising GWB for things Obama did, and blaming Obama for things GWB did. (I can see blaming Obama for not stopping things GWB started -- heck, I do it myself -- but these folks claim in public that Obama started things that began before Obama ran for the US Senate.)

[seawasp]

As Murstein points out, an out-of-office President can just be pardoned for anything, and probably would be just as a gesture to make sure that the currently-sitting President would get the same treatment by the next one, just in case.

More importantly, it's really kinda irrelevant who started it (and a lot of the nasty "exceed your authority" for law enforcement and the intelligence services started well before Bush); it's much more important to STOP It. And that's not gonna be easy.